


stay alive, kill your mind

by crownedcarl



Series: assemble what weapons i can find [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 22:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3150584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedcarl/pseuds/crownedcarl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I’m strong, he tells himself, because someone weak would have died already. He’s strong even though he threw up the first time he killed a walker, and he’s strong even though he misses his mom so much it hurts sometimes; he can’t remember her face, and his dad-</p><p>His dad died a long time ago, but Carl remembers his voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stay alive, kill your mind

**Author's Note:**

> carl-centric au wherein he's been on his own since the very beginning. written at 3am many a night. i plan to follow this up with post-terminus events when i regain my groove, which might take a while. title abbreviated from twenty one pilots' song migraine. series title also taken from the same song.
> 
> additionally, i'd like to give another warning regarding the non-consensual sex in this fic; i've used both "implied/referenced" and "non-graphic" rape to best convey how far it goes, but please do heed this warning if you're uncomfortable reading about it.
> 
> (14.10.2015: made minor edits; some grammatical changes took place + minor edits in syntax & flow.)

His dad gets shot. The world ends. People aren't people anymore, and people don’t die like they used to. Cities are abandoned. After a while, it isn't as shocking as it was at the start.

–

Getting separated from your group is a death sentence in this new world. Everyone knows that; no matter how much ammo you've got or how resourceful you are, one person against a dozen or more undead is far from an even fight. It’s a slaughter. They've all been witness to it.

He knows that being alone means being vulnerable, and that goes for anyone; adults as well as kids. On the road by yourself, nobody lasts very long, and when they get overrun by a herd out on the highway, Carl ends up too far away to successfully find his way back.

He sits down heavily when he knows that he should be running; his knees are tucked up to his chest, his breathing too fast as he sits there, hearing his heartbeat thumping inside his chest. It sounds panicked, and it is, _he_ is, but he can’t stay here. Even now, terrified and lost, Carl knows that he can’t stay put.

He gets up. He doesn't cry; not yet. He doesn't have time for that, and in his frenzy, he realizes he doesn't have any weapons, nothing to defend himself with, and he’s going to have to do _something_ to protect himself.

Carl has skinny knees and bruised palms and he is eleven years old. He runs.

–

He’s listened to Shane enough to be able to figure things out. Following a road is always a good idea, but the first time that Carl tries, he gets scared; there are too many walkers and he doesn't have a gun, or even a knife, so Carl sticks to the tree line and ignores his aching belly as he walks away from the big cities. He remembers that it’s too dangerous to go there, too many undead to risk going for a run, but after he spends three days without food and barely any water, he considers turning back.

Mom, he thinks, eyes welling up with tears before he forces them back. She wouldn't want him to cry. She’d want him to be brave and alive and somehow find his way back to her, and Carl will. He just has to –

He isn't sure what he has to do, so he walks.

–

He’s dizzy from dehydration and exhaustion. Carl only narrowly avoids falling over and collapsing as the night stretches out in front of him, and there are spots dancing in front of his eyes, clouding his vision, bright and blurry and shining like stars. Carl shields his eyes when the lights come closer. There’s a sound, a thud, footsteps, and he turns to run, braces to fight, when a voice reaches him.

“-son? Are you by yourself? Christ, Jess, hand me that blanket-“

“We've got to move, just grab him-“

Someone lifts him, and it’s too much like how his dad used to hug him. Carl doesn't want it, but he’s tired and aching and he barely notices that he’s being placed inside the backseat of a car before his eyes slip shut.

–

He’s lucky. The people that find him and pick him up and take him in are nice; when they ask him if he can use a gun, Carl hesitates. He doesn't want to be a burden or useless, but when he shakes his head, they only make sure to teach him as fast as they can. He can see the older woman shake her head at that, murmuring _he’s still a kid_ before reluctantly handing over a gun.

It’s heavy and the weight of it is cold. Carl remembers Shane saying _she sings, doesn't she_ , brandishing his weapon and grinning like there was nothing wrong in the world.  


The world isn't the same anymore, and Carl learns to shoot a gun before his twelfth birthday.

–

Not everyone is going to survive. He knows that. He’s known that since the start, but Carl can’t get by on his own, not like everyone else can; he’s too small, too short, and too young. He can’t stab walkers in the right places and he can’t fight them off when they’re so much taller, so he learns to run and climb and fire a gun instead. Running only takes him so far and climbing is usually his last resort, and even firing his gun doesn't always work. It only attracts more of them.

Carl learns early on that a group, any group, is better than being alone.

–

He stays with the old woman and her children – forgets their names, might as well – until they swerve off the road on a scorching day. The son is driving and Carl can see the glass slicing his face open on impact, but he doesn't react; dead or unconscious, it doesn't matter. It means _useless_ either way, and Carl needs to move.

When he stumbles out of the car and reaches across the old woman’s lap, she looks at him like he’s going to save her, but Carl can’t do that. He takes her son’s gun, instead, reaches for whatever he might need, and he knows already that he’s doing the right thing.

If he was older, he could carry more, but for now, all he can take is a backpack and duffel bag; they're filled with food and ammo and a busted-up old radio, and Carl staggers under the weight before he takes off down the road. The wreckage of the car will distract any walkers, at least for a little while.

You have to put yourself first, he learns, and he lives by that.

–

He doesn't come by mirrors often, but when he does get a chance, Carl looks at his reflection and tries to remember what his mom looked like. He must look like her, he thinks; like his dad, too, but his dad had a beard and his mom had long hair and Carl has neither of those things. He’s got blue eyes and freckles and pale skin, even under the baking sun, and Carl doesn't really remember much of what life was like before this.

In the mirror, Carl sometimes feels a sense of disconnect. This isn't my body. Those aren't my eyes. I was never a kid.

–

For months on end, Carl is alone. He’s alone through the harsh winter and weeping spring, and he’s alone all the way 'til the end of summer, days slowly getting darker. He has weapons and he has food, usually, and silence has become his greatest weapon. Light-footed and quick, he gets by groups of walkers he’s seen other people get torn apart by; he’s stood by and watched, his horror slowly becoming numbness and that numbness slowly becoming disinterest.

People have always died. People will always die, and Carl can’t stop to cry about it every time they do.

He learns that women won’t look at him like men sometimes do, and that a group of just men means trouble. Beyond his gun, Carl has his lies, and he knows just how effective a little lie can be to get you what you want. Please, sir, it’s just me, I’m all by myself, I’m so hungry, can you please help me?

They fall for it, easy as that, and Carl has works out a plan that always gets him what he needs. Make them pity you, make them trust you, make them care for you - then take what you need and slip away in the middle of the night.

In the beginning, he thought it was better to be with a group. Now, after all the defeat and all the horror, Carl knows better. Alone is the only way to stay safe.

–

He doesn't miss people. He doesn't need people, either, but Carl isn't good at being alone, at first. He can’t afford to sleep for too long and be caught off-guard, but staying awake makes him sluggish and sluggish can get him killed. It’s a fine line, in the beginning, figuring out his limits and knowing when to quit and just how little food a body really needs to keep going for another day. He learns a lot of things.

Carl doesn't stay with groups for longer than he has to. They coddle him, sometimes, insisting that he’s too young to be out there by himself and that they can protect him. In a fit of anger, Carl whirls on the latest – a bunch of college kids, a middle-aged man, and a teenage girl – and tells them that he’s better off alone. Nobody kept him safe that first time around; why should now be any different?

Without a car and without being able to sleep in shifts, Carl walks. Winter comes back ‘round.

–

When he walks cautiously into a deserted neighborhood, it feels almost like being in a long-forgotten dream. The sun hangs pale in the sky, and Carl cautiously steps into an abandoned two-story house with his gun at the ready; he never gets used to the weight of metal and death, but he holds it steady as he climbs the stairs.

Empty. No life to be found except for the glimpses of people in the framed pictures on the wall, and Carl turns his head away. He doesn't need to know who these people were or how they lived and died, if the kids got a puppy for Christmas – it doesn't matter.

I’m strong, he tells himself, because someone weak would have died already. He’s strong even though he threw up the first time he killed a walker, and he’s strong even though he misses his mom so much it hurts sometimes; he can’t remember her face, and his dad-

His dad died a long time ago, but Carl remembers his voice. Rough, somehow, but gentle.

Stupid thoughts, he tells himself, but Carl curls up under a stranger’s covers that night and finds a baseball bat in the hallway broom closet the next morning; the neighbor’s yard has barbed wire haphazardly strung at the top of the fence, and Carl cuts his hands in his effort to get it down.

Like in the movies, he thinks, carefully wrapping the barbed wire around the bat, testing the weight of it in his hands. It caves in the skull of the first walker he kills with it, and Carl falls down to his knees with the momentum of the swing, scraping his skin raw through his jeans. He ends up panting with his palms laid flat on his thighs, breathing unsteadily.

He doesn't know what town he’s in; doesn't know the name of the state or what direction he’s been going in for all this time. Dread and helplessness sometimes threaten to crush him, because he’s too young, he thinks, too scared, but those are excuses. Staying alive is as good as it gets, and Carl has made it so far.

His face looks older, somehow, like the weight of everything he’s done is starting to show in his sunken eyes.

–

For a while, he’s with a group. He still doesn't commit their names to memory; he treks alongside them only because they've got some vague idea of how to track, find water, and Carl could use those skills.

–

Bad things happen.

Bad people have always been around, but the first time a man looks at Carl with dark eyes, he doesn't understand. Big mistake, one of his worst, because Carl knows better than to trust people, but he still ends up in the dirt, a hand pressed down over his mouth. He doesn't know what’s happening, but his body does. It fights.

When it’s over and behind him, Carl sits up, palms dragging through the mud and gravel, eyes unfocused. He’s never felt pain quite like this before, sharp up his spine and dull along his thighs, like the agony can’t find one place to settle. He’s breathing a little too fast, can feel blood where there shouldn't be any, but Carl can stand and Carl can walk and he can put a bullet in a man’s brain, so he does.

It’s just one man.

–

He stays away from other groups, from then on out.

When he does encounter them, there are always men like the last one, but Carl refuses to let them get the upper hand. They look at him and see someone exposed, vulnerable, fragile, and Carl teaches them differently. He makes demands, cuts deals, because if he’s going to suffer, he wants to gain something out of it. _I want half your rations and that blanket. Your boots and whatever ammo you've got left._

He feels sick. He makes himself sick, but it doesn't last.

He learns how to bargain; when one of the men looks him dead in the eyes and sees that Carl isn't flinching back, he laughs - _son of a bitch, boys, looks like we've got ourselves a deal. Do you always make’em with your body?_

Carl never says it out loud, but when it’s all he has that anyone else wants, he does what he thinks he has to. When it’s just one man, it’s easy enough to lull them into a false sense of security and then drive a knife up through their chin, feeling the blood splatter across his face in the flash of a second. When there’s more –

Carl learns when not to fight, when not to resist. It’s easier that way. It hurts less.

–

He doesn't want to join another group, but a woman with blonde hair crosses his path in the woods and holds her hands out when Carl takes aim between her eyes. “Hey, whoa!” she calls out, and Carl’s hand doesn't waver. “Kid, hold on – it’s just me, alright?”

He doesn't trust that. “Where did you come from?” he asks, because he doesn't care who she is, what she’s named; she has clean clothes. She’s clean all over, which means running water, which means – something else, something bigger, but Carl knows better than to get his hopes up.

The woman shifts her weight. Carl watches closely. “There’s a town,” she tells him, gesturing carefully, watching Carl just as wearily as he’s watching her. “We've got people, a _lot_ of people. Walls, too; biters can’t get in.”

Hope.

“Is there-“ Carl swallows back his own eager words, because people can’t be trusted, not again, not ever. Not in this world. “Do you have food?”

He sounds desperate, but the woman nods, a brief expression of pity visible on her face. “Yeah,” she promises, lowering her hands, half-smiling when Carl lowers his gun, as well. “We've got hot water and comfy beds, too.”

He doesn't think; he just follows.

–

Some of the guards laugh when Carl insists that he can wield a gun just as well as they can. Climbing up on the barricade they use to take watch, Carl proves it to them; after he kills three walkers with bullets square between their eyes, the laughter dies off and the Governor lets him work the walls. Everyone gets put to use, he claims, and Carl feels a shivery satisfaction at the acknowledgment. He’s good at this.

He’s just one person, so he doesn't get his own house. He’s just a kid, too, so he doesn't get his own apartment either. Instead, Carl gets a room in a house where people without any familial ties share the building, and Carl is working on instinct by the time he secures the windows and doors around his room. It gets him laughed at.

The Governor looks at him with appreciation, sometimes. When he takes Carl aside and shows him what he calls his private collection, a morbid fascination rises up inside of Carl. Touching his fingers to cold glass, he looks at the twisted, lifeless faces on the other side.

The Governor knows what survival means. He knows that killing is necessary, and that when people try to take what’s yours, you have to hit them back.

They talk about a group at the prison, and Carl rides by the Governor’s side during the first assault.

–

The Governor is a dangerous man. When the assault fails and they pull over, Carl is about to suggest retreating, regrouping, finding a better way to fight and win, but someone else says it first.

They die. Everyone dies, and Carl can’t find it within himself to say a word about it. His hands don’t shake; his chest doesn't tremble for breath. He watches the bodies fall and looks up at the Governor, seeing the way his eyes have gone distant and his mouth tight.

“We’ll get them,” Carl says, voice muted. “We’ll kill them. All of them.”

It takes a lifetime for the Governor to move, but when he does, Carl isn't afraid.

–

Everything falls apart.

–

He’s alone again. It isn't by choice, this time, because some of the people at Woodbury were beginning to matter, but Carl has to be alone this time. The Governor broke his promises and turned their home into a nightmare, and then he disappeared. Carl watched him stumble through the chaos and smoke and knew he’d never see him again.

He grabs his things quickly, scavenging for whatever he needs and then he gets gone. The road is familiar and welcomes him back like it’s been waiting, and Carl walks.

–

There’s been too many promised safe havens that turned out to be nothing but rubble and destruction, so when Carl sees the signs, he ignores them. Terminus might be nothing but ashes by now, but he’s got nowhere else to go, and the realization hits him with staggering force.

He can’t keep moving from place to place. It isn't safe, and he’s so tired he can hardly see straight. Last month, he caught a fever. Two weeks ago, he cut his hand up; it’s barely healed, and Carl is starting to understand why being alone might as well be a death sentence. At this rate, he’ll never get himself back in one piece, so when he passes the next sign promising sanctuary, Carl makes himself believe it.

He doesn't have anywhere else to go, is the truth. It drives him for the duration of the slow, agonizing walk along the abandoned train-tracks, and he can’t run from walkers forever, but he can’t fight them all, either, and this is a journey he hopes he won’t ever have to experience again. He’s weak and fatigued, and when he tries to rest at night, hidden away under a thin blanket, he can feel the sharp push of his own collarbone, the bony dexterity of his hands, and more than anything, he thinks he looks like his mom.

It’s been a long time since he thought about her. Carl doesn't know if she’s alive, or where she could be, but he doesn't think about her much. He wonders if she stayed with Shane, but he’s seen grief tear people apart, and if they think he’s dead – well. It’s better than hoping to find him in this vast wasteland.

–

There is no salvation. There never was and never will be, and Carl is crowded into a train cart with strangers he’d kill in a heartbeat if he could, but he’s too tired. The men that shove him inside say _he’s too skinny, what good will he be_ and _I don’t know, could be a good catch_ and he sleeps for a very long time once he’s settled against the back of the cart, at an angle where he can watch the door. He sleeps; if they come for him while he can’t fight, maybe that’s better. He’s tired of fighting, for now, and makes a habit out of cataloging the other people in the cart. None of them seem useful.

His dad would know what to do.


End file.
